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Summary

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Teaser

At their regular staff meeting, the crew of Deep Space 9 review the state of the Dominion War. It is a time of great uncertainty as the threat of a Dominion attack on Vulcan looms overhead, and while the Romulans have retaken Benzar (home to the Benzites), there is no way to be certain they will relinquish control after the war. For now, Sisko, Kira and Jake are taking a trip to Bajor to visit a new discovery in the remains of B'hala. Although Dax observes how trivial such things seem in the midst of a war, the archaeologists have specifically requested Sisko's presence.

RanjenKoral leads the trio through the ruins, where numerous tunnels have been dug and excavations have taken place since Sisko's last visit. The monk leads them to a pedestal underneath the old temple, thus older than B'hala, with some "interesting" writing in Ancient Bajoran; part of the text reads, "Welcome Emissary". As he touches it, he is thrown across the room. He loses consciousness as the Prophets send him a vision in which they mention the end and the beginning and claim that the Reckoning is at hand.

Act One

Sisko takes the tablet back to DS9, where he and Dax study it in a science lab to translate it. In the meantime, he greets KaiWinn at the airlock. She is visibly troubled by the removal of the tablet from Bajor. In her usual, subtle manner, she compares his actions to the plundering the Cardassians did during the Occupation. After refusing, Winn lodges a formal complaint with Starfleet Command, and AdmiralRoss tells Sisko to stop meddling in Bajoran affairs and return the tablet. When Dax discovers the meaning of the words, she finds the tablet says that, among other things, the Prophets will weep and the gateway to the Celestial Temple – DS9 – will burn.

Act Two

Dr.Bashir, Odo, and Worf are sitting idly on the second level of Quark's, considering the repercussions. As Quark himself walks by, he complains about how bad business has been because of talk about the Reckoning, but their conversation is cut short as the station trembles and the wormhole begins to behave erratically. Meanwhile, Sisko and Winn have met in his office, where she informs him of flooding, earthquakes and the like taking place on Bajor as they speak as a result of the shifts in the wormhole. She believes he has angered the Prophets by taking the tablet, and she has a request from First MinisterShakaar stating as much with a warning that if Sisko keeps the tablet any longer it will harm relations between Bajor and the Federation. With no other choice, Sisko agrees to return the tablet on the first transport the next morning.

That night, Sisko is unable to sleep and finally heads for the science lab. He angrily tells the Prophets that he's had enough of their riddles, and wants a straight explanation. After no response, he picks up the tablet and throws it against the wall in a rage, smashing it. As he looks down at its shattered remains, two energy discharges: one red, one blue, emerge from it and disappear through the ceiling.

Act Three

Dax and Odo find no signs of such a discharge, although there is an unexplained energy drain. Winn believes Sisko smashed the tablet just to spite her. As he tries to reassure her that the Prophets have a plan and wanted him to smash the tablet, he is called to the Promenade.

Kira, possessed by a Prophet

Sisko finds Kira standing in the doorway to the Bajoran Shrine. Her body has been inhabited by one of the Prophets. Although they are worried for Kira's safety, Odo reassures Sisko that Kira would have been willing to surrender herself to the Prophets no matter what the consequences, even if it meant her death. The Prophet approaches Sisko to announce that the Reckoning, which will be either the end or the beginning, has begun and she awaits Kosst Amojan. Winn recognizes the Prophet's words and explains that Kosst Amojan is the evil one, a Pah-wraith that was banished from the Celestial Temple. She also realizes that this pertains to a prophecy. If the Prophet wins the upcoming battle, then Bajor will enter its Golden Age of a thousand years of peace. She offers herself to the Prophet as its humble servant but is ignored; the Prophet simply informs Sisko that his task is complete.

Sisko tells the senior staff that DS9 is to be evacuated. Julian balks at this idea, but Sisko knows the battle could destroy the station. However, Dax suggests not letting it be fought on the station. She suggests that they slowly but gradually flood the Promenade with chroniton particles, which are fatal to the Prophets, which would force it to leave. Given what the Prophets have done for him and Bajor, Sisko refuses saying that this is the Prophets' price for destroying the fleet of Dominion ships that would have certainly overrun the Alpha Quadrant.

Worf and Odo find one another near the airlock as they oversee the evacuation of the civilian population. Worf admires Odo's devotion after what Odo said about Kira letting the Prophet take her, and he is unsure that he could have done the same if it had been Jadzia. With Kira on their side, Odo assures Worf the Prophets will be victorious.

Sisko is able to persuade Starfleet that DS9 must be abandoned given the Prophets are the only thing preventing the Dominion fleet from coming through the wormhole. Suddenly Sisko is called by Odo to the Promenade as a group of Bajorans, led by Winn, refuse to leave the Promenade as they pray for the Prophets' victory. Sisko confronts Winn and threatens to personally order the people to leave as their Emissary. Sisko and Winn begin to verbally spar once more when interrupted by Kira. The Prophet announces that Kosst Amojan has chosen his vessel, Jake.

Jake Sisko possessed by a Pah-wraith

Act Four

Sisko screams for the Pah-wraith to leave Jake and take him instead. Kira and Jake face off and energy beams, red from Jake and blue from Kira, come out of their chests and meet at the center. The spectacle continues as sparks fly and the energy buildup reaches critical levels. As the buildup could trigger an explosion at any second, Dax and Winn in an unusual state of agreement urge Sisko to leave the station; however, he is determined to stay and see the Reckoning through and orders them both to abandon the station. Dax contacts Worf and tells him they're leaving. Dax hurries to ensure that everyone is evacuated, and the final people are taken away in the station's runabouts. Now the station is empty save for Sisko, Jake and Kira and Winn who sneaked away unnoticed in all the confusion. She heads to Ops, where she reluctantly approaches a computer console. With tears in her eyes, she triggers the chroniton increase. "May the Prophets forgive me," she whispers.

According to the script, in the scene prior to her arrival in Ops, "Kai Winn sees a martyr in the making – the last thing she wants is to spend the rest of her life standing in the shadow of a statue of Sisko."

The veins on Jake's face have popped out in the meantime as the Prophet appears to be winning the celestial battle. When the chroniton levels begin to rise, the Prophet screams out in protest, but both spirits are forced to leave the station, causing both Kira and Jake to collapse.

"Captain's log, supplemental. The station's population has returned and repairs are underway. Major Kira has recovered from her experience, but my son is still in the infirmary."

Sisko visits his son in the infirmary, where Jake is still weak but will recover eventually. He tries but does not know what to say to his son to explain the incident, but no explanation is necessary. Jake was able to feel the Pah-wraith's hatred and knew it had to be destroyed, even if it meant his death.

As Odo and Kira walk together on the Promenade, she thanks him for his confidence in her and willingness to let her go if the Prophet's victory meant her death. His ability to let her die for her faith is flattering, although he reassures her that he still would have been happier if the Prophets had chosen someone else. Kira then escorts Kai Winn to the airlock, where Winn claims Sisko should be grateful for her actions. Kira knows Winn's true motive was not the good of Bajor but her jealousy of Sisko, and thanks to Winn, the evil of Kosst Amojan still exists. Because of her, the future of Bajor, DS9, and everything else is uncertain.

Memorable quotes

"During the reckoning, the Bajorans will either suffer horribly or... eat fruit."
"... Eat fruit?"
"Given the tone of the rest of the inscriptions, I would bet on the horrible suffering."

- Dax and Sisko

"In a way, I feel sorry for her. She spends her whole life in service to the Prophets, and then one day, after years of self-sacrifice and commitment, she gets her reward - she's elected Kai. It should've been the greatest moment of her life."
"But my being the Emissary spoiled it for her."
"The Kai has always been the spiritual leader of Bajor, but Winn has to share that role with you. And to make matters worse, you're an outsider, a non-Bajoran - that's something she can never forgive you for."

- Kira and Sisko, on Kai Winn

"Who knows? The rest of the tablet probably says "Go to Quark's. It's happy hour.""
"I like the way you think, Doctor."

- Bashir and Quark

"I just had this uncontrollable urge to smash the tablet."
"Oh, I get those urges all the time."

- Sisko and Dax

"May the Prophets forgive me."

- Winn, when she drives off the Prophets and the Pah-wraiths with chroniton radiation

"I heard that you told the captain I was willing to give my life to serve the Prophets. I appreciate that you respect my beliefs."
"Just the same, I wouldn't have minded if the Prophets had chosen someone else."

Bradley Thompson describes his and David Weddle's initial idea for the show as being quite simple; "We were looking for the ultimate battle between good and evil. We thought, 'Let's put a Prophet up against a Pah-wraith and deal with some deep stuff'." When they pitched this idea to the producers, they were told that a similar story had already been pitched by writing team Harry Werksman and Gabrielle G. Stanton, so the producers purchased the Werskman/Stanton idea, and assigned Thompson and Weddle to compose the script. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion)

Initially, Thompson and Weddle felt that the story should be handled very much like a horror movie, and when they told Behr the direction they were heading in, he loved it and told them "It's Godzilla versus Mothra, with a mummy movie opening." They took this to heart and wrote an elaborate opening sequence involving a vedek discovering a casket in a hidden chamber in the walls of B'hala. When he opens it, two entities escape, and the vedek has a heart attack and dies. The entities then disappear into the ceiling, and the camera pans upwards to reveal a large bird sitting on a wall looking down at the dead body. This opening was scrapped because it was felt to be too schlock-horror like. As Thompson explains, "It was way too mummy movielike." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion)

Another idea found in Thompson and Weddle's script but not in the final episode was that it is Sisko who stops the battle by flooding the Promenade with chroniton radiation, choosing to protect the station and the people rather than respect the wishes of the Gods. However, after taking over the writing of the script, Echevarria was having a hard time getting this dénouement to work. As he explains it, "But then it hit us that this was exactly the opposite of what should have been. It wasn't that Sisko should put a stop to it, it was that Sisko should be the last man of faith. And if that was the case, then the combatants were wrong. Jake should be one of them, because Sisko would be like Abraham, being asked to sacrifice his own son." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion)

Production

In the first few drafts of the script, Kira is possessed by the Prophet and Kai Winn by the Pah-wraith, and their battle aboard Deep Space 9 was far more elaborate than that seen in the finished episode. Weddle and Thompson wrote them as having a running battle all over the station, throwing fireballs at one another and completely destroying the Promenade. The whole idea however became far too complicated from a logistical point of view, and René Echevarria was brought on board by Ira Behr to try to smooth things out and simplify the script without losing the essence of the plot. Apparently, when Steve Oster first saw Thompson and Weddle's draft he responded by proclaiming that it would be a fifteen-day shoot (a normal DS9 shoot is 6 days). (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion)

The battle between the Prophet and the Pah-wraith as seen in the final episode was devised by director Jesús Salvador Treviño. He saw it as a battle of wills rather than an all-action shoot-out, and the script was rewritten accordingly. However, while Treviño's solution might have made for some excellent television for viewers seeing the completed episode, with all the post-production effects work added, during the shoot itself, it all looked rather silly. As Dennis McCarthy, who scores an episode with a cut from raw footage, testifies, "They were just standing there, looking weird, like they were at the dentists office, thinking of their upcoming root canals." Indeed, during the shoot of this super-serious battle, both Nana Visitor and Cirroc Lofton had great difficulty keeping straight faces long enough to get complete takes. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion)

Kai Winn

This episode undoes the recent modifications in the character of Winn Adami, as seen in the fifth season episodes "Rapture" and "In the Cards". While it seemed as if her role as villain was being rendered more ambiguous, in much the same way as the writers had done with Dukat throughout the third and fourth seasons, and her relationship with Sisko was improving, this episode relocates her in her more familiar role of antagonist, a role she has occupied since her introduction in the first season episode "In the Hands of the Prophets". However, as some fans have pointed out, her sudden return to an antagonistic stance as regards Sisko is somewhat unexplained; there is never any reason given for why she suddenly feels so much antipathy towards him again, when there was every indication the last two times we saw her that she was becoming more accepting of him. René Echevarria has acknowledged this discrepancy, however he doesn't try to fill in the blanks; "In "Rapture", she seemed to be coming around to Sisko's side a little bit. But here she just cannot stand to see that once again he's going to steal her thunder. That was the biggest dodge we did, because we didn't really explain why she had a change of heart again." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion)

Indeed, in relation to Winn, the events of "The Reckoning" foreshadow her ultimate betrayal of the Prophets in the final arc of the series, and in any case, Ira Steven Behr was much happier with the antagonistic Winn than the conciliatory one; "The episode gave us a more multidimensional Kai Winn. We had lost sight of what to do with her for a while. We loved having her as a villain, but this really made her a tragic figure. It made her a totally screwed-up figure, and we now understood her." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion)

Worf's line "The Prophets are the only thing keeping the Dominion from coming through the wormhole" establishes that the Dominion has still not brought any reinforcements from the Gamma Quadrant. It had been implied in "Sacrifice of Angels" that the destruction of the Dominion fleet was a one-time favor, but obviously, the Dominion itself wouldn't know this, and it seems that they don't want the same thing to happen again, so they have not attempted to travel through the wormhole since that incident.

In "The Assignment", Jake said he always wanted to see a Pah-wraith; in this episode, he is possessed by one.

Dax states that the tablet says "The Bajorans will suffer horribly... or eat fruit." In the scene between Kira and Odo near the beginning of the episode, Kira is indeed eating fruit salad.

The phrase "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die," quoted by Quark and Bashir, is a common conflation of two quotations from the Bible: "Eat, drink and be merry" from Ecclesiastes 8:15, and "Eat and drink, for tomorrow we die" in both Isaiah 22:13 and 1 Corinthians 15:32.

This episode contains a great number of references to previous episodes, many of which, while not necessary to follow the plot, do serve to enrich the story:

There are numerous references to the blossoming relationship between Kira and Odo, which began in the previous episode, "His Way".

The visit to the ruins of B'hala recalls the fifth season episode "Rapture", where Sisko first discovered them and excavation began.

The phrase "Of Bajor" is once again heard in relation to both the Prophets and Sisko, recalling the episodes "Accession" (where the Prophets say they are of Bajor) and "Sacrifice of Angels" (where they tell Sisko that he too is of Bajor).

Sisko's claims that he is no longer uncomfortable in his position as Emissary of the Prophets refers to the 'Emissary Trilogy' ("Destiny", "Accession" and "Rapture"), which charted his gradual acceptance of his position. Indeed, "The Reckoning" could be seen as something of a sequel to the trilogy insofar as it is the first episode to show just how deep his newfound faith has become.

The 'penance' mentioned by Jadzia Dax refers to "Sacrifice of Angels", where the Prophets tell Sisko that they will destroy the Dominion fleet in return for an as yet undisclosed penance.

Sisko's comment that Winn and Shakaar have never agreed about anything before refers to the third season episode "Shakaar", where Shakaar defeats Winn to become First Minister of Bajor, and the two are shown as being diametrically opposed in their ideologies.

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